Architecture Here and There

Illustrations: Above, new buildings in Dresden's Neumarkt, at the center of which (see below middle, rebuilt, below bottom original) is the reconstructed Frauenkirche, a monumental Baroque church destroyed in World War II (photos of Neumarkt and Dresden skyline by Nathan Walker). Below top, four buildings of which Britons were asked, in a YouGov survey (leading into the Stirling Prize award ceremony last Sunday), which they'd prefer to have near where they live.

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I always suffered from the delusion that all the evidence that people prefer traditional to modernist architecture was "anecdotal." That is, could not really be trusted, wasn't really scientific, not really worth compiling in the battle to bring beauty back to architecture. But the truth is just the opposite, the Thursday's column just scratches the surface of the statistical evidence of the degree to which the public embraces traditional buildings and rejects modernist ones. Very gratifying. Check it out. By the way, the results of the YouGov poll on the buildings at left are to be revealed in Thursday's column.

Classicists Audun Engh and Michael Mehaffy have kindly helped me compile the information in this week's column.

I have a problem that I must resolve before I write the column to follow this week's. At the end of the column, the symposium being held this Friday and Saturday about the relationship of Providence to the City Beautiful movement is noted. Should I write about that next, or should I write about the theories of Nikos Salingaros, whose work linking nature, biology and traditional patterns of building is the subject for which this week's column leads in?

Adding to the difficulty of the decision is that this reporter has to take three weeks of vacation before the end of the year, which will tend to interrupt whatever narrative flow results from the sequencing of these columns. Any advice?

 Tags  AIA architecture Berlin Dresden London Nikos Salingaros Paris Richard Rogers Stirling Prize

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